YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid dataFixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menuFixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streamsUpdated locales

YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid dataFixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menuFixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streamsUpdated locales

YouTube bulk download: it is now possible to mouse-select a part of a YouTube page and request the download of all the videos that are linked from from the selected section. This is feature was existing in VDH6 but was limited to unsigned videos. You can also now launch a Download & Convert bulk operation, allowing for instance to retrieve a large number of MP3 files in a few clicks. Try it: from a YouTube page, try CTRL-A to select all the page, then click the Video DownloadHelper toolbar button.

Smartnaming is back: you can now again specify for given sites where in the page to get the video file name from, or choose an obfuscated file name for discretion. Unlike VDH6, the new Smartnaming allows full XPath expressions to generate accurate video names. Try it: from a page containing a video, right-click and pick Video DownloadHelper > Smart Naming Rule

Conversion rules: it is possible again to define per-domain and/or per extension conversion rules, so that downloaded files are automatically converted in background. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Conversion Rules in the dropdown menu

Variant preferences editing: as with VDH6, you can now reorder the variant qualities you want to appear at the top of the list. Try it: open Video DownloadHelper settings and choose Video Qualities in the dropdown menu. Use Drag & Drop to reorder the variant preferences

VDH commands from Firefox Tools menu: this is an opt-in feature, it has to be enabled from VDH settings > Appearance

Fixes-------

Fixed aggregating YouTube videos that could, in certain cases failed with error Invalid dataFixed clicking through YouTube playlist could show previous video title in the download menuFixed handling misformed MP2T frames on some HLS streamsUpdated locales

Added gallery capture: as it was the case with version 6.3.3, it is now possible to capture galleries of images and links embedded into a page. By default, you need to manually analyze the page from the add-on main panel for the potential galleries to be discovered, or you can change the setup to perform the analyze automatically whenever a page is loaded.

Added right-click download commands: right-clicking into a page gives access to a Video DownloadHelper menu. From there you can request the download of a video playing in the page, or perform some top-level commands like opening the extensions settings or requesting the analyze of the page.

Added hotkeys: you can now start the default action on the top-most detected video variant in the page by pressing ALT+SHIFT+D. Also keys ALT+SHIFT+Y opens the add-on main panel.

Blacklist edition: it is now possible to edit the blacklist from the settings, in order to remove an entry that has been erroneously added, or add new ones manually. (Blacklisting allows to ignore some video detections like ads based on their origin domain)

Settings reset: from the add-on settings, you can now reset changed values to the original settings.

Display ETA in downloads: when displaying the running downloads section, you can now see the progress percentage and how long it takes to complete.

Download directory setup user interface: for companion app downloads, you now have a user interface to select the download directory.

FIXES

Navigating YouTube pages: following a video link within a YouTube page caused the newly detected title and thumbnail to be mis-reported as the previous hit (Thanks Coco for reporting this).

YouTube videos containing double quote character: the title was then wrongly reported

Multi-line details values: when using the Details action, property value was displayed on a single line

You may have noticed that for some time, downloaded videos from Vimeo (or from sites hosting their videos on Vimeo) do not have audio.

This is due a change in their streaming technology and they now stream the audio and video parts of the media separately, as YouTube have been doing for several years.

The Video DownloadHelper workaround is the same as with YouTube: use an external video converter to aggregate audio and video streams into a single audio+video file that can be used by your video player.

We are aware of the inconvenience of having to install an external application, but there is no easy alternative here. Note that once the converter is installed, the process is totally transparent and you end up with a fully playable video without any special action.

If you want to avoid using the converter, you can still use Video DownloadHelper to download separately the two streams (but you will have to find a way to play them together). For doing so, open DownloadHelper settings > More > Chunked streaming, check Advanced. In section DASH streaming, parameter When DASH contains both audio and video lets you choose which stream(s) you want to download. Default is Aggregate audio and video, which implies using the converter but you can change it to choose audio or video only.

A number of YouTube videos are streamed not only in ADP mode (audio and video in separate streams) but each of those streams in DASH mode (plenty of small segments that need download and rework to create a playable media). Previously, Video DownloadHelper ignored those videos, causing a No media found message to be displayed. With version 6.2.0, you are now offered to download those videos in several quality variants.

HLS-streamed videos have been supported since version 5.5.0 but some servers use encryption on those streams, causing Video DownloadHelper to generate a useless 48 bytes file. This new version supports encrypted HLS.

Important fixes

A number of users complained about not having audio when playing HLS videos using Windows Media Player. This is now fixed and you don't have to use alternative players to hear those videos.

In some cases, HLS captures lead to a file containing only audio. This was due to a bug that has been fixed in this version.

Users with very poor networking conditions like an Internet connection going up and down had a hard time downloading videos, particularly big ones. The new version fixes an issue with chunked downloads not using retries properly, and add a configurable delay between retries.

Version 6.2.0 also fixes an issue with pages containing many videos (like a video-oriented tumblr page). If requesting some downloads and scrolling down to make new videos to be detected, you could lose control of the downloads.

Other fixes and improvements

Clearing errors now have immediate effect on toolbar icon badge

Fixed bug where in some cases the wrong language could be used in the add-on interface

Fixed screen region capture when e10s is enabled

Prevented text selection in main panel. In some conditions, it could be difficult to unselect.

This version handles specifically a few very popular web sites (Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr) in order to display in the add-on download list better titles and/or thumbnails. It is now easier to identify which video to pick if several of them have been detected in the page.

On March 24th, YouTube made some changes causing Video DownloadHelper not to recognize some videos when logged in. We provided a fix for that within 24 hours under the form of a beta version of the add-on. This 5.5.0 release brings those changes to everyone.

Videos streamed over the chunked protocols HLS (MPEG-TS/MP2T, on sites like Dailymotion and many live streaming sites) and DASH (M4F used on sites like Vimeo) can now be downloaded without the need for the converter. Previous 5.4.x versions had a basic support for those streams, but it was inconvenient (you had to keep the video running) and the converter had to be used to finalize the download to a proper video file. This new version even offer in most cases the choice between several quality variants.

The old list of supported sites (which were not maintained anymore) is back to life. All the listed 1000+ video web sites are alive and are DownloadHelper-compatible. New sites are added weekly. Those lists are hosted on the downloadhelper.net website and no longer managed by the addon.

A long-time request from users with a low quality network connection: automatic download retries. If the download fails in a recoverable way, the add-on tries to resume the download from where it stops. The number of retries before giving up is configurable.

Add-on settings are now managed from with a tab and no longer an add-on panel.

The DownloadHelper icon is now usable from the Firefox options panel.

An option has been added to switch to the tab owning a particular video entry in the panel.

Video entries with long titles can now have the ellipsis (…) at right, left or display over several lines, based on the settings).

Video DownloadHelper 5.3.0 introduces a new capture method we call Screen Capture, or SCRAP in some UI places, which consists of taking snapshots of a browser window region at high-frequency, and encode them on the fly, using the converter, to create a video file.

This capture method is used in two new features:

Browsing session capture: an easy way to make web sites demo videos. The add-on captures the visible part of a browser window and optionally, is able to highlight the mouse.

Applet capture: the add-on analyzes the loaded page to detect Flash and video regions big enough to be considered as capturable content and creates new entries in the detected hits list. Passing the mouse over those entries highlights the related region in the page so you know what you are about to capture.